I've received a few inquiries as to my AIM profile and accompanying away message. Both are excerpted from a poem by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz. The complete text can be found here, and here's an mp3 link to her performing the poem, via poetryslam.com.
For those uninterested in adding me to your buddy list in order to read my profile/away message, I've excerpted them below.
You are more absurd than Ionesco.
You are more abstract than Joyce,
more inconsistent than Agatha Christie
and more Satanic than Rushdie's verses.
I can't believe I used to want to Sappho you.
I used to want to Pablo Neruda you,
to Anais Nin And Henry Miller you. I used to want
to be O for you, to blow for you in ways
that even Odysseus' sails couldn't handle.
But self-imposed illiteracy isn't a turn-on.
You used to make fun of me being a writer,
saying 'Scientists cure diseases,
what do writers do?'
I mean, have you ever gotten an inner thirsting
for Zora Neale Hurston?
Or heard angels herald for you
to read F Scott Fitzgerald?
Have you ever had a beat attack for some Kerouac?
The only Morrison you know is Jim, and you think
you're the noble one?
Go Plath yourself.
Your heart is so dark, that even Joseph Conrad
couldn't see it, and it is so buried under bullshit
that even Poe's cops couldn't hear it.
Your mind is as empty as the libraries in Fahrenheit 451.
Your mind is as empty as Silas Marner's coffers.
Your mind is as empty as Huckleberry Finn's wallet.
It's too easy to say that I like this poem because I can relate to it, since I used to date a scientist who wasn't as well-read as I, and now that we're no longer together, I'm missing him something fierce. I liked this poem even before I started dating the scientist, so not only is that reason banal, it's false. I like the name-dropping quality, and the mp3 of her reading the poem is kickass. I'm a big fan of slam poetry, and since she's the Slam Master Champion (I think), it's pretty obvious that I like her work.
I like that it's National Poetry Month because I can be lazy and post a poem and feel topical and intelligent, and minimal thought is required.
